FOOTNOTES:

Diderot, the third chief of the attack, does even fuller justice than Rousseau to Voltaire’s share in stimulating thought and opening the mind of France; and in spite of the extravagance of its first clause, there is a glimpse of true discrimination in the characteristic sentence—‘Were I to call him the greatest man nature has produced, I might find people to agree with me; but if I say that she has never yet produced, and is never likely to produce again, a man so extraordinary, only his enemies will contradict me.’299This panegyric was specially disinterested, because Voltaire’s last years had been not least remarkable for his bitter antipathy to the dogmatic atheism and dogmatic materialism of that school, with which Diderot was most intimate personally, and with whose doctrines, if he did not at all times seem entirely to share them, he had at any rate a warmer sympathy than with any other system of thatnegative epoch, when every chief thinker was so vague positively, so weak constructively, and only the subalterns, like D’Holbach and Helvétius, presumed to push on to conclusions.

The story of Voltaire’s many long-sustained and unflagging endeavours to procure whatever redress might be possible for the victims of legal injustice, has been very often told, and mere commemoration of these justly renowned achievements may suffice here. ‘The worst of the worthy sort of people,’ he once said, ‘is that they are such cowards. A man groans over wrong, he shuts his lips, he takes his supper, he forgets.’300Voltaire was not of that temper. He was not only an extremely humane man; extraordinary vividness of imagination, lack of which is at the root of so much cruelty, and unparalleled sympathetic quality, thinness of which explains so much appalling indifference, animated him to a perseverance in protecting the helpless, which entitles him to a place by the side of Howard and the noblest philanthropists. There were three years in which the chief business of his life was to procure the rehabilitation of the name of the unfortunate Calas, and the payment of a money recompense to his family. He agitated the whole world with indignation and pity by means of narratives, pleas, short statements and long statements, passionate appeals and argumentative appeals. Powerful ministers, fine ladies, lawyers, men of letters, were all constrainedby his importunate solicitations to lend an ear to the cause of reason and tolerance, and to lift up an arm in its vindication. The same tremendous enginery was again brought into play in the case of Sirven. In the case of La Barre and his comrade D’Etallonde, his tenacity was still more amazing and heroic. For twelve years he persevered in the attempt to have the memory of La Barre rehabilitated. One of the judicial authorities concerned in that atrocious exploit, struck with horror at the thought of being held up to the execration of Europe by that terrible avenger, conveyed some menace to Voltaire of what might befall him. Voltaire replied to him by a Chinese anecdote. ‘I forbid you,’ said a tyrannical emperor to the chief of the tribunal of history, ‘to speak a word more of me.’ The mandarin began to write. ‘What are you doing now?’ asked the emperor. ‘I am writing down the order that your majesty has just given me.’301There was a something inexorable as doom about Voltaire’s unrelenting perseverance in getting wrong definitely stamped and transfixed. If he did not succeed in obtaining justice for the memory of La Barre, and in procuring for D’Etallonde free pardon, at least he never abandoned the endeavour, and he was just as ardent and unwearied in the twelfth year, as he had been while his indignation was freshly kindled. He was more successful in the case of Lally. Count Lally had failed to save India from the English, had been taken prisoner, and had then in a magnanimous wayasked his captors to allow him to go to Paris to clear himself from various charges, which the too numerous enemies he had made were spreading against his character and administration. The French people, infuriated at the loss of their possessions in India and Canada, were crying for a victim, and Lally, after a process tainted with every kind of illegality, was condemned to death by the parliament of Paris (1766) on the vague charge of abuse of authority, exactions, and vexations.302The murdered man’s son, known in the days of the Revolution as Lally Tollendal, was joined by Voltaire in the honourable work of procuring revision of the proceedings; and one of the last crowning triumphs of Voltaire’s days was the news brought to him on his dying bed, that his long effort had availed.

The death of Lally is the parallel in French history to the execution of Byng in the history of England, and, oddly enough, Voltaire was very actively occupied in trying to avert that crime of our government, as well as the crimes of his own. He had known Byng when he was in England.303Some one told him that a letter from Richelieu, who had been Byng’s opponent at Minorca, would be useful, and Voltaire instantly urged the Duke to allow him to forward a letter he had, stating Richelieu’s conviction of his defeated enemy’s bravery and good judgment. Voltaire insists that this letter turned four votes on thecourt-martial.304He informs a correspondent, moreover, of the fact that Byng had instructed his executor to express his deep obligation both to Voltaire and Richelieu.305Humanity is erroneously counted among commonplace virtues. If it deserved such a place, there would be less urgent need than, alas, there is, for its daily exercise among us. In its pale shape of kindly sentiment and bland pity it is common enough, and is always the portion of the cultivated. But humanity armed, aggressive, and alert, never slumbering and never wearying, moving like ancient hero over the land to slay monsters, is the rarest of virtues, and Voltaire is one of its master-types.

His interest in public transactions in his latest years was keener than ever. That fruit of Polish anarchy, the war between Russia and Turkey which broke out in 1768, excited his imagination to a pitch of great heat, and the despatch in the spring of 1770 of a squadron from Cronstadt, for the so-called liberation of Greece, made him weep for joy. He implored Frederick not to leave to Catherine alone the burden of so glorious a task. Superstition had had seven crusades; was it not a noble thing to undertake one crusade to drive the barbarous Turks from the land of Socrates and Plato, Sophocles and Euripides? Frederick replied very sensibly that Dantzic was more to him than the Piræus, and that he is a little indifferent about the modern Greeks, who, if ever the artsshould revive among them, would be jealous to find that a Gaul by his Henriade had surpassed their Homer; that this same Gaul had beaten Sophocles, equalled Thucydides, and left far behind him Plato, Aristotle, and the whole school of the Porch;306—which was, perhaps, not quite so sensibly said.

The successes of Russia against Turkey in 1770 roused the anxiety of Austria and Prussia, and the solution of what we know as the Eastern question was indefinitely postponed by the device of partitioning Poland (Aug. 5, 1772), the alternative to the acquisition of the whole of that country by Russia, the least civilised of the three powers. Of this memorable transaction Voltaire heartily approved, and he gave thanks that he had lived to see ‘such glorious events.’307He insisted, decidedly against the king’s will, that Frederick had devised the scheme, for he found it full of genius, and to all seeming he discerned none of the execration which the event he had just witnessed was destined to raise in his own country in years to come. His friendship with two of the chief actors may have biassed his judgment; but Voltaire seldom allowed, indeed by the conditions of his temperament he was unable to allow, personal considerations of this kind to obscure his penetrating sight. He may well have thought the partition of Poland desirable, for the reasons which a statesman of to-day may find adequate: the country’s hopeless political anarchy, its crushing material misery, the oppressive power of the church,the inevitable and standing peril to Europe of the existence of such a centre of conflagration. It is worth remarking that Rousseau was much more keenly alive to the gravity of the event, that he protested against what had been done, and that his influence has been one of the main causes of the illogical sympathy of democratic Europe for one of the most pestilent of aristocratic governments.

The accession of Turgot to power in 1774 stirred an ardent sympathy in Voltaire. Like the rest of the school, he looked upon this as the advent of the political messiah,308and he shared the extreme hopes of that great and virtuous man’s most sanguine lieutenants. He declared that a new heaven and a new earth had opened to him.309His sallies against the economists were forgotten, and he now entered into the famous controversy of the free trade in grain with all his usual fire. His fervour went too far for the sage minister, who prayed him to be somewhat less eager in alarming uninformed prejudice. Still he insisted on hoping all things.

Contemple la brillante auroreQui t’annonce enfin les beaux jours.Un nouveau monde est près d’éclore;Até disparaît pour toujours.Vois l’auguste philosophie,Chez toi si long temps poursuivie,Dicter ses triomphantes lois.*****Je lui dis: ‘Ange tutélaire,Quels dieux répandent ces bienfaits?’‘C’est un seul homme.’310

When it proved that one man alone, ‘qui ne chercha le vrai, que pour faire le bien,’311was no match for the mountain torrent of ignorance, prejudice, selfishness, and usage, and Turgot fell from power (May 1776), Voltaire sunk into a despair for his country, from which he never arose. ‘I am as one dashed to the ground. Never can we console ourselves for having seen the golden age dawn and perish. My eyes see only death in front of me, now that M. Turgot is gone. It has fallen like a thunderbolt on my brain and my heart alike. The rest of my days can never be other than pure bitterness.’312

The visit to Paris was perhaps a falsification of this prophecy for a moment. In 1778, yielding either to the solicitations of his niece, or to a momentary desire to enjoy the triumph of his renown at its centre, he returned to the great city which he had not seen for nearly thirty years. His reception has been described over and over again. It is one of the historic events of the century. No great captain returning from a prolonged campaign of difficulty and hazard crowned by the most glorious victory, ever received a more splendid and far-resounding greeting. It was the last great commotion in Paris under the old régime. Thenext great commotion which the historian has to chronicle is the ever-memorable fourteenth day of July, eleven years later, when the Bastille fell, and a new order began for France, and new questions began for all Europe.

The agitation of so much loud triumph and incessant acclamation proved more violent than Voltaire’s feeble health could resist, and he died, probably from an over-dose of laudanum, on the thirtieth of May 1778. His last writing was a line of rejoicing to the young Lally, that their efforts had been successful in procuring justice for the memory of one who had been put to death unjustly. How far Voltaire realised the nearness of vast changes we cannot tell. There is at least one remarkable prophecy of his, in the well-known letter to Chauvelin:—‘Everything that I see appears the throwing broadcast of the seed of a revolution, which must inevitably come one day, but which I shall not have the pleasure of witnessing. The French always come late to things, but they do come at last. Light extends so from neighbour to neighbour, that there will be a splendid outburst on the first occasion, and then there will be a rare commotion. The young are very happy; they will see fine things.’313A less sanguine tone marks the close of the apologue in which Reason and Truth, her daughter, take a triumphant journey in France and elsewhere, about the time of the accession of Turgot. ‘Ah, well,’ says Reason, ‘let us enjoy these gloriousdays; let us rest here, if they last; and if storms come on, let us go back to our well.’314Whether this meant much or little none can know. It would be shallow to believe that such men as Voltaire, with faculty quickened and outlook widened in the high air to which their fame raises them, really discerned no more than we, who have only their uttered words for authority, can perceive that they discerned. Great position often invests men with a second sight whose visions they lock up in silence, content with the work of the day.

1Œuvres,xxxv. p. 214.

2See Comte’sPhilosophic Positive, v. 520.

3Vauban and Boisguillebert are both to be found inLes Economistes Financiers du XVIIIième Siècle, published by Guillaumin, 1851.

4‘Je ne sais si, à tout prendre, et malgré les vices éclatants de quelques uns de ses membres, il y eut jamais dans le monde un clergé plus remarquable que le clergé catholique de France au moment où la Révolution l’a surpris, plus éclairé, plus national, moins retranché dans les seules vertus privées, mieux pourvu de vertus publiques et en meme temps de plus de foi: la persécution l’a bien montré’—De Tocqueville,Ancien Régime, liv. ii. c. 11.

5Rem. sur les Pensées de M. Pascal.Œuvres, xliii. p. 68.

6Novum Organum, § 67.

7Some fault has been found with this passage by one or two private critics, as being not entirely just to the eminent thinker to whom it refers, and to whom my own obligations, direct and indirect, are so numerous, notwithstanding my final inability to follow him in his ideas of social reconstruction, that the idea of adding to the sum of misrepresentation of which Comte and his doctrines have been the victims, is particularly disagreeable to me. Here, therefore, is one passage in which Comte seems to speak rather more warmly of Voltaire than the words in the text imply: ‘Toutefois, l’indispensable nécessité mentale et sociale d’une telle élaboration provisoire laissera toujours, dans l’ensemble de l’histoire humaine, une place importante à ses principaux coopérateurs, et surtout à leur type le plus éminent, auquel la postérité la plus lointaine assurera une position vraiment unique; parceque jamais un pareil office n’avait pu jusqu’alors échoir, et pourra désormais encore moins appartenir à un esprit de cette nature, chez lequel la plus admirable combinaison qui ait existé jusqu’ici entre les diverses qualités secondaires de l’intelligence présentait si souvent la séduisante apparence de la force et du génie’ (Phil. Pos.v. 518). Against this we have to place the highly significant fact that Voltaire only appears in the calendar as a dramatic poet, as well as the whole tenour and spirit of Comte’s teaching, namely, as he puts it in one place, that ‘une pure critique ne peut jamais mériter beaucoup d’estime’(Politique Positive, iii. 547).

8J. B. Rousseau’sMoïsade.

9Œuvres,lxii. p. 45.

10Dictionnaire Philosophique,s.v. Œuvres, lii. p. 378.

11Œuvres, i. 513.

12Œuvres,lxii. pp. 86 and 89.

13Ib.lxii. p. 107.

14A.R.O.V.E.T.,L(e). I(eune).

15Chevalier appears to have been a title given by courtesy to the cadets of certain great families.

16Œuvres,iv. 18.

17Histoire de l’ancien Gouvernement de la France(1727).

18Buckle’sHist. of Civilisation, i. 657-664.

19Sainte-Beuve,Causeries, v. 111.

20Œdipe, iv. sc. 1.

21Ib.ii. v.

22Le Pour et le Contre, ou Epître à Uranie.Œuvres, xv. pp. 399, 403.

23Condorcet,Vie de Voltaire. Œuvres, iv. 20.

24Condorcet,Vie de Voltaire. Œuvres,iv. 20.

25Correspondence, 1725.Œuvres, lxii. pp. 140-49.

26Lettres sur les Anglais, xv.Œuvres, xxxv. p. 114. Cf. also Letter xxiv. (pp. 197-202).

27Lord Stanhope’sHist. of England, ii. 231 (ed. 1858).

28Lettres sur les Anglais, ix.Œuvres, xxxv. p. 73.

29Correspondence, 1732.Œuvres,lxii. p. 253.

30Martin’sHist. de France, vol. xiv. 265-67.

31Philosophie de Newton, Pt. i. c. i.Œuvres, xli. p. 46.

32Lettres sur les Anglais, xv.Œuvres, xxxv. pp. 115-20.

33Philos. de Newton, Pt. i. c. ix.(Œuvres, xli. p. 108.

34D’Alembert.

35Dictionnaire Philosophique, s.v. Locke.Œuvres, lvi. p. 447.

36Corr. 1736.Œuvres, lxiii. p. 29.

37Soirées de St. Petersbourg, 6ième Fentretien, i. 403.

38Corr. 1737; lxiii. p. 154.

39Ib.p. 248. Cf. also lxii. p. 276.

40Lettres sur les Anglais, xiv.Œuvres, xxxv. pp. 102-5.

41Œuvres, vol. xliii. p. 77.

42Ib.p. 20.

43Œuvres, vol. xliii. p. 26.

44Corr. 1737.Œuvres, lxiii. p. 248.

45Lettres sur les Anglais, xiii.Œuvres, xxxv. p. 95.

46Lettres, etc. x.Œuvres, xxxv. p. 81.

47De Tocqueville’sAncien Régime, liv. ii. c. 9, p. 137 (ed. 1866).

48Œuvres, xxxv. p. 80.

49The reader ofZadigwill remember the ‘homme comme moi,’ and his ill luck at Babylon.Œuvres, lix. pp. 153-59.

50Lettres sur les Anglais, xi.Œuvres, xxxv. p. 85.

51Lett. Ang. xxi.; xxxv. pp. 172, etc.

52Lettres sur les Anglais, i.; xxxv. p. 31.

53Lett. Ang. vi.; xxxv. p. 62.

54Lett. Ang. vii. pp. 62-65.

55Lett. Ang. ii.; xxxv. p. 42.

56Œuvres, xxxv. p. 185.

57Ess. sur la Poésie Epique.Œuvres, xiii. p. 445, and pp. 513-26.

58Œuvres, xxxv. p. 155.

59Œuvres, xxxv. p. 159.

60Corr. 1736.Œuvres, lxiii. p. 4.Ib.60.

61Œuvres, xxxv. pp. 189, 190.

62For Berkeley, see Corr. 1736 (Œuv. lxiii. pp. 130, 164, etc.), and for the other two, see Le Philosophe IgnorantŒuvres, xliv. p. 69 and p. 47).

63Œuv.xliv. p. 47.

64TheDe Veritatewas published in 1624.

65See the list from 1725 to 1728 in Leland’sView of the Deistical Writers, i. 132-144.

66Œuvres, lvii. pp. 107-114.

67Corr. 1736-37.Œuv.lxiii. p. 60, p. 86, and p. 112.

68Examen Important de Milord Bolingbrocke.Œuv.xliv. p. 89.

69See Lechler’sGeschichte des Englischen Deismus, p. 396.

70Reflections. Works, i. 419 (ed. 1842).

71Encyclopédic Nouvellede Jean Reynaud et Pierre Leroux, s.v. Voltaire, p. 736. De Maistre audaciously denies that Voltaire ever did more than dip into Locke.Soirées, vi.

72Villemain’sCours de Lit. Française, i. p. 111. See also De Maistre,Soirées de St. Petersbourg, vi. p. 424. On the other hand, see Lanfrey’sL’Eglise et les Philosophes du 18ième Siècle, pp. 99, 108, etc.

73Madame de Grafigny. Cf. Desnoiresterres,Voltaire au Château de Cirey, p. 246, etc.

74Desnoiresterres, p. 257.

75Condorcet,Vie de Voltaire, p. 61. A graceful and dignified letter in this kind is that to Formey, May 12, 1752.Œuv.lxv. p. 64.

76Grimm,Correspondance Littéraire, v. p. 5.

77Œuv.lxv. p. 395.

78Correspondence. Also, Essai sur la Poésie Epique, c. vi.Œuvres, xiii. p. 481.

79Œuvres, lxv. p. 91.

80Corr. with the Abbé Moussinot, 1737, and afterwards.Œuvres, lxiii. pp. 122, 160, 176, etc.

81Corr. 1752.Œuvres, lxv. p. 115.

82Vie de Voltaire, p. 37.

83Desnoiresterres, p. 323.

84Foisset’sCorrespond. de Voltaire avec De Brosses, etc., published in 1836.

85Quoted in Desnoiresterres, p. 239.

86Desnoiresterres, p. 242.

87Epître à Mdme. la Marquise du Châtelet, sur la Calomnie.Œuvres, xvii. p. 85.

88See Whewell’sHist. Induc. Sci. bk. vi. c. v.

89Desnoiresterres, pp. 313-21.

90Exposition du Livre des Institutions Physiques.Œuvres, xlii. pp. 196-206.

91Œuvres, xlii. p. 207, etc.

92Corr. 1737.Œuvres, lxiii. p. 182.

93Condorcet,Vie de Voltaire, p. 43.

94Corr. 1737.Œuvres, lvi. p. 428.

95Dict. Phil. s.v.Œuvres, lvi. p. 428.

96Dict. Phil. s.v.Œuvres,lvi. p. 430.

97Corr. 1758.Œuvres, lxxv. p. 50.

98Temple du Goût.Œuvres, xv. p. 99.

99Corr. 1743.Œuvres, lxiv. p. 119.

100Œuvres de Vauvenargues, ii. 252.

101Temple du Goût. Œuvres, xv. p. 100.

102In some readings given before popular audiences in Paris in 1850, it was found that Voltaire was only partially effective. ‘Trop d’artifice,’ says Ste. Beuve, ‘trop d’art nuit auprès des esprits neufs; trop de simplicité nuit aussi; ils ne s’en étonnent pas, et ils ont jusqu’à un certain point besoin d’être étonnés.’ (Causeries, i. 289.)

103Temple du Goût.Œuvres; xv. p. 95.

104Corr. 1732.Œuvres,Ixii. p. 218.

105The dates of the most famous of his tragedies are these:Œdipe, 1718;Brutus, 1730;Zaïre, 1732;Mort de César, 1735;Alzire, 1736;Mahomet, 1741;Mérope, 1743;Sémiramis, 1748;Tancrède, 1760.

106Hettnerr, for instance:Literaturgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts,ii. 227.

107Zaïire, act i. sc. 1

108Essay on Hum. Und. iv. 19, § 3.

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